ed. Everywhere old religious communities were remodelled, and new religious communities called into existence. Within a year after the death of Leo, the order of Camaldoli was purified. The Capuchins restored the old Franciscan discipline-the midnight prayer and the life of silence. The Barnabites and the society of Somasca devoted themselves to the relief and education of the poor. To the Theatine order a still higher interest belongs. Its great object was the same with that of our early Methodists-to supply the deficiencies of the parochial clergy. The Church of Rome, wiser than the Church of England, gave every countenance to the good work. The members of the new brotherhood preached to great multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the beds of the sick, and administered the last sacraments to the dying. Foremost among them in zeal and de of the Teutonic nations. Italy was, in fact, a part of the empire of Charles V.; and the court of Rome was, on many important occasions, his tool. He had not, therefore, like the distant princes of the north, a strong selfish motive for attacking the Papacy. In fact, the very measures which provoked the Sovereign of England to renounce all connection with Rome, were dictated by the Sovereign of Spain. The feelings of the Spanish people concurred with the interest of the Spanish government. The attachinent of the Castilian to the faith of his ancestors was peculiarly strong and ardent. With that faith were inseparably bound up the institutions, the independence, and the glory of his country. Between the day when the last Gothic king was vanquished on the banks of the Xeres, and the day when Ferdinand and Isabella entered Granada in triumph, nearly eight hundred years had elapsed; and during those years the Spanish nation had been en-votion was Gian Pietro Caraffa, afterwards gaged in a desperate struggle against misbe- Pope Paul the Fourth. In the convent of the lievers. The crusades had been merely an Theatines at Venice, under the eye of Caraffa, episode in the history of other nations. The a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended existence of Spain had been one long crusade. the poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, After fighting Mussulmans in the Old World, starved himself almost to death, and often salshe began to fight heathens in the New. It was lied into the streets, mounted on stones, and, under the authority of a Papal bull that her waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began children steered into unknown seas. It was to preach in a strange jargon of mingled under the standard of the cross that they march- Castilian and Tuscan. The Theatines were ed fearlessly into the heart of great kingdoms. among the most zealous and rigid of men ; but It was with the cry of "Saint James for Spain!" to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline that they charged armies which outnumbered seemed lax, and their movements sluggish; for them a hundredfold. And men said that the his own mind, naturally passionate and ima Saint had heard the call, and had himself in ginative, had passed through a training which arms, on a gray war-horse, led the onset before had given to all his peculiarities a morbid inwhich the worshippers of false gods had given tensity and energy. In his early life he had way. After the battle, every excess of rapa- been the very prototype of the hero of Cercity or cruelty was sufficiently vindicated by vantes. The single study of the young Hidalgo the plea that the sufferers were unbaptized. had been chivalrous romance; and his existAvarice stimulated zeal. Zeal consecrated ence had been one gorgeous day-dream of prinavarice. Proselytes and gold mines were cesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had sought with equal ardour. In the very year in chosen a Dulcinea, "no-countess, no duchess" which the Saxons, maddened by the exactions--these are his own words-" but one of far of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spa-higher station ;" and he flattered himself with niards, under the authority of Rome, made themselves masters of the empire and of the treasures of Montezuma. Thus Catholicism, which, in the public mind of Northern Europe, was associated with spoliation and oppression, was, in the public mind of Spain, associated with liberty, victory, dominion, wealth, and glory. It is not, therefore, strange that the effect of the great outbreak of Protestantism in one part of Christendom should have been to produce an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal in another. Two reformations were pushed on at once with equal energy and effect-a reformation of doctrine in the North-a reformation of manners and discipline in the South. In the course of a single generation, the whole spirit of the Church of Rome underwent a change. From the halls of the Vatican to the most secluded hermitage of the Apennines, the great revival was everywhere felt and seen. All the institutions anciently devised for the propagation and defence of the faith, were furbished up and made efficient. New engines of still more formidable power were construct the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and the jewelled turbans of Asiatic kings. In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosperous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness. His con stitution was shattered, and he was doomed to be a cripple for life. The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises, was no longer for him. He could no longer hope to strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favour in the sight of beautiful women. A new vision then arose in his mind, and mingled itself with his old delusions in a manner which, to most Englishmen, must seem singular; but which those who know how close was the union be. tween religion and chivalry in Spain, will be at no loss to understand. He would still be a soldier-he would still be a knight-errant; but the soldier and knight-errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun. He would break the charm under which false prophets held the souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit led him to the Syrian deserts, and to the chape of the Holy Sepulchre. Thence he wandered back to the farthest west, and astonished the Convents of pain and the schools of France by his penance and vigils. The same lively imagination which had been employed in picturing the tumult of unreal battles, and the charms of unreal queens, now peopled his solitude with saints and angels. The Holy Virgin de- Nor was it less their office to plot against the scended to commune with him. He saw the thrones and lives of apostate kings, to spread Saviour face to face with the eye of flesh. Even evil rumours, to raise tumults, to inflame civil those mysteries of religion which are the hard-wars, to arm the hand of the assassin. Inflexiest trial of faith, were in his case palpable to sight. It is difficult to relate without a p tying smile, that, in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take place; and that, as he stood praying on the steps of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud with joy and wonder. Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who in the great Catholic reaction, bore the same share which Luther bore in the great Protestant movement. sicians, merchants, serving-men; in the hostile court of Sweden, in the old manor-houses of Cheshire, among the hovels of Connaught; arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away the hearts of the young, animating the courage of the timid, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. | ble in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty-the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad rulerwere inculcated by the same man according as he addressed himself to the subject of Philip or the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these men as the most rigid, others as the most indulgent of spiritual directors. And both descriptions were correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had who had forgotten her marriage-vow, found in the Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the world, tolerant of the little irregularities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. His first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making him a heretic too. Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic Spaniard turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without a patron, without recommendations, he entered the city where now two princely temples, rich with paintings and many-coloured marble, comme-run his rival through the body, the frail beauty morate his great services to the Church; where his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones, enshrined amidst jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God. His activity and zeal bore down all opposition; and under his rule the order of Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to the full measure of its gigantic powers. With what vehemence, with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battles of their church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the order of Jesus was concentrated the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public mind -of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached the church was too small for the audience. The name of Jesuit on a title-page secured the circulation of a book. It was in the ears of the Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, and the beautiful breathed the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought up from the first rudiments to the courses of rhetoric and philosophy. Literature and science, lately associated with infidelity or with heresy, now became the allies of orthodoxy. Dominant in the south of Europe, the great order soon went forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and deserts, of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quarteringblocks, Jesuits were to be found under every disguise, and in every country-scholars, phy The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The Jesuits invaded all the countries which the great maritime discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to European enterprise. In the depths of the Peruvian mines, at the marts of the African slave-caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China, they were to be found. They made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and disputed in tongues of which no other native of the West understood a word. The spirit which appeared so eminently in this order, animated the whole Catholic world. The court of Rome itself was purified. During the generation which preceded the Reforma tion, that court had been a scandal to the Christian name. Its annals are black with treason, murder, and incest. Even its more respectable members were utterly unfit to be ministers of religion. They were men like Leo X.; men who, with the Latinity of the Augustan age, had acquired its atheistical and scoffing spirit. They regarded these Christian mysteries of which they were stewards, just as the Augur Cicero and the Pontifex Maximus Cæsar regarded the Sibylline books and the pecking of the sacred chickens. Among themselves they spoke of the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the Trinity, in the same tone in lect spirits. Whoever was suspected of heresy, whatever his rank, his learning, or his reputation, was to purge himself to the satisfaction of a severe and vigilant tribunal, or to die by fire. Heretical books were sought out and destroyed with the same unsparing rigour. Works which were once in every house were so effectually suppressed that no copy of them now is to be found in the most extensive libraries. One book in particular, entitled "Of the benefits of the death of Christ," had this fate. It was written in Tuscan, was many times reprinted, and was eagerly read in every part of Italy. But the Inquisitors detected in it the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. They proscribed it: and it is now as utterly lost as the second decade of Livy. which Cotta and Velleius talked of the oracle of Delphi, or of the voice of Faunus in the mountains. Their years glided by in a soft dream of sensual and intellectual voluptuousness. Choice cookery, delicious wines, lovely women, hounds, falcons, horses, newly-discovered manuscripts of the classics, sonnets and burlesque romances in the sweetest Tuscanjust as licentious as a fine sense of the graceful would permit; plates from the hand of a Benvenuto, designs for palaces by Michel Angelo, frescoes by Raphael, busts, mosaics, and gems just dug up from among the ruins of ancient temples and villas;-these things were the delight and even the serious business of their lives. Letters and the fine arts undoubtedly owe much to this not inelegant sloth. But when the great stirring of the mind of Europe Thus, while the Protestant Reformation probegan when doctrine after doctrine was as- ceeded rapidly at one extremity of Europe, the sailed-when nation after nation withdrew Catholic revival went on as rapidly at the from communion with the successor of St. other. About half a century after the great Peter, it was felt that the Church could not separation, there were throughout the north, be safely confided to chiefs whose highest Protestant governments and Protestant nations. praise was, that they were good judges of Latin In the south were governments and nations compositions, of paintings, and of statues, actuated by the most intense zeal for the anwhose severest studies had a Pagan character, cient church. Between these two hostile and who were suspected of laughing in secret regions lay, geographically as well as morally, at the sacraments which they administered, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, and of believing no more of the Gospel than of Southern Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the the Morgante Maggiore. Men of a very different contest was still undecided. The governments class now rose to the direction of ecclesiastical of those countries had not renounced their affairs-men whose spirit resembled that of connection with Rome; but the Protestants Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman Pontiffs were numerous, powerful, bold, and active. In exhibited in their own persons all the austerity France they formed a commonwealth within of the early anchorites of Syria. Paul IV. the realm, held fortresses, were able to bring brought to the Papal throne the same fervent great armies into the field, and had treated zeal which had carried him into the Theatine with their sovereign on terms of equality. In convent. Pius V., under his gorgeous vest- Poland, the king was still a Catholic; but the ments, wore day and night the hair-shirt of a Protestants had the upper hand in the Diet, simple friar; walked barefoot in the streets at the filled the chief offices in the administration, and, head of processions; found, even in the midst in the large towns, took possession of the parish of his most pressing avocations, time for pri-churches. "It appeared," says the Papal vate prayer; often regretted that the public nuncio, "that in Poland, Protestantism would duties of his station were unfavourable to completely supersede Catholicism." In Bagrowth in holiness; and edified his flock by in-varia, the state of things was nearly the same. numerable instances of humility, charity, and forgiveness of personal injuries; while, at the same time, he upheld the authority of his see, and the unadulterated doctrines of his church, with all the stubbornness and vehemence of Hildebrand. Gregory XIII. exerted himself not only to imitate but to surpass Pius in the severe virtues of his sacred profession. As was the head, such were the members. The change in the spirit of the Catholic world may be traced in every walk of literature and of art. It will be at once perceived by every person who compares the poem of Tasso with that of Ariosto, or the monuments of Sixtus V. with those of Leo X. But it was not on moral influence alone that the Catholic Church relied. The civil sword in Spain and Italy was unsparingly employed in her support. The Inquisition was armed with new powers and inspired with a new energy. If Protestantism, or the semblance of Protestantism, showed itself in any quarter, it was instantly met, not by petty, teasing persecution, but by persecution of that sort which bows down and crushes all but a very few se The Protestants had a majority in the Assembly of the States, and demanded from the duke concessions in favour of their religion, as the price of their subsidies. In Transylvania, the house of Austria was unable to prevent the Diet from confiscating, by one sweeping decree, the estates of the church. In Austria Proper it was generally said that only onethirteenth part of the population could be counted on as good Catholics. In Belgium the adherents of the new opinions were reckoned by hundreds of thousands. The history of the two succeeding generations is the history of the great struggle be tween Protestantism possessed of the north of Europe, and Catholicism possessed of the south, for the doubtful territory which lay between. All the weapons of carnal and of spiritual warfare were employed. Both sides may boast of great talents and of great virtues. Both have to blush for many follies and crimes. At first, the chances seemed to be decidedly in favour of Protestantism; but the victory remained with the Church of Rome. On every point she was successful. If we overleap another half century, we find her victorious | Elector of Saxony-the natural head of the and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Protestant party in Germany-submitted to Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and Hungary. Nor become, at the most important crisis of the has Protestantism, in the course of two hundred years, been able to reconquer any portion of what it then lost. struggle, a tool in the hands of the Papists. Among the Catholic sovereigns, on the other hand, we find a religious zeal often amounting to fanaticism. Philip II. was a Papist in a very different sense from that in which Elizabeth was a Protestant. Maximilian of Bavaria, brought up under the teaching of the Jesuits, was a fervent missionary wielding the powers of a prince. The Emperor Ferdinand II. deliberately put his throne to hazard over and over again, rather than make the smallest concession to the spirit of religious innovation. Sigismund of Sweden lost a crown which he might have preserved if he would have renounced the Catholic faith. In short, everywhere on the Protestant side we see languor, everywhere on the Catholic side we see ardour and devotion. It is, moreover, not to be dissembled that this wonderful triumph of the Papacy is to be chiefly attributed, not to the force of arms, but to a great reflux in public opinion. During the first half century after the commencement of the Reformation, the current of feeling, in the countries on this side of the Alps and of the Pyrenees, ran impetuously towards the new doctrines. Then the tide turned, and rushed as fiercely in the opposite direction. Neither during the one period, nor during the other, did much depend upon the event of battles or sieges. The Protestant movement was hardly checked for an instant by the defeat at Muhlberg. The Catholic reaction went on at full speed in spite of the destruction of the Armada. Not only was there, at this time, a much It is difficult to say whether the violence of the more intense zeal among the Catholics than first blow or of the recoil was the greater. among the Protestants; but the whole zeal of Fifty years after the Lutheran separation, Ca- the Catholics was directed against the Protes tholicism could scarcely maintain itself on tants, while almost the whole zeal of the Prothe shores of the Mediterranean. A hundred testants was directed against each other. years after the separation, Protestantism could | Within the Catholic Church there were no sescarcely maintain itself on the shores of the rious disputes on points of doctrine. The deBaltic. The causes of this memorable turn incisions of the Council of Trent were received; human affairs well deserve to be investigated. and the Jansenian controversy nad not yet The contest between the two parties bore arisen. The whole force of Rome was, theresome resemblance to the fencing match in fore, effective for the purpose of carrying on Shakspeare "Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, the war against the Reformation. in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet other hand, the force which ought to have wounds Laertes." The war between Luther fought the battle of the Reformation was exand Leo was a war between firm faith and un-hausted in civil conflict. While Jesuit preachbelief, between zeal and apathy, betweeners, Jesuit confessors, Jesuit teachers of youth, energy and indolence, between seriousness and overspread Europe, eager to expend every frivolity, between a pure morality and vice. Very different was the war which degenerate Protestantism had to wage against regenerate Catholicism. To the debauchees, the poisoners, the atheists, who had worn the tiara during the generation which preceded the Reformation, had succeeded Popes, who, in religious fervour and severe sanctity of manners, might bear a comparison with Cyprian or Ambrose. The order of Jesuits alone could show many men not inferior in sincerity, constancy, courage, and austerity of life, to the apostles of the Reformation. On the faculty of their minds and every drop of their blood in the cause of their church, Protestant doctors were confuting, and Protestant rulers were punishing sectaries who were just as good Protestants as themselves "Cumque superba foret BABYLON spolianda tropæis, Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos." In the Palatinate, a Calvinistic prince persecuted the Lutherans. In Saxony, a Lutheran persecuted the Calvinists. In Sweden every body who objected to any of the articles of the Confession of Augsburg was banished. In Scotland, Melville was disputing with other Protestants on questions of ecclesiastical go with men who, though zealous for the Reformation, did not exactly agree with the court or all points of discipline and doctrine. Some were in ward for denying the tenet of reprobation; some for not wearing surplices. The Irish people might at that time have been, in all probability, reclaimed from Popery, at the expense of half the zeal and activity which Whitgift employed in oppressing Puritans, and Martin Marprelate in revning bishops. But while danger had thus called forth in the bosom of the Church of Rome many of the highest qualities of the Reformers, the Reform-vernment. In England, the jails were filled ed Churches had contracted some of the corruptions which had been justly censured in the Church of Rome. They had become lukewarm and worldly. Their great old leaders had been borne to the grave, and had left no successors. Among the Protestant princes there was little or no hearty Protestant feeling. Elizabeth herself was a Protestant rather from policy than from firm conviction. James I., in order to effect his favourite object of marrying his son into one of the great continental houses, was ready to make immense concessions to Rome, and even to admit a modified primacy in the Pope. Henry IV. twice abjured the reformed doctrines from interested motives. The VOL. III.-5 As the Catholics in zeal and in union had a great advantage over the Protestants, so had they also an inhitely superior organization In truth, Protestanism, for aggressive purposes, had no organization at all. The Reformed 2 M sumes the direction to herself. It would be absurd to run down a horse like a wolf. It would be still more absurd to let him run wild, breaking fences and trampling down passengers. The rational course is to subjugate his will, without impairing his vigour-to teach him to obey the rein, and then to urge him to full speed. When once he knows his master, he is valuable in proportion to his strength and spirit. Just such has been the system of the Church of Rome with regard to enthusiasts. She knows that when religious feelings have obtained the complete empire of the mind, they impart a strange energy, that they raise men above the dominion of pain and pleasure, that obloquy becomes glory, that death itself is contemplated only as the beginning of a higher and happier life. She knows that a person in this state is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and suffer, yet from which calm and sober-minded men would shrink. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn hope, in which intrepidity and impetuosity are more wanted than judgment and self-command, and sends him forth with her benedictions and her applause. Churches were mere national Churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas, and was utterly without any machinery for foreign operations. The Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for Scotland alone. The operations of the Catholic Church, on the other hand, took in the whole world. Nobody at Lambeth, or at Edinburgh, troubled himself about what was doing in Poland or Bavaria. But at Rome, Cracow and Munich were objects of as much interest as the purlieus of St. John Lateran. Our island, the head of the Protestant interest, did not send out a single missionary or a single instructor of youth to the scene of the great spiritual war. Not a single seminary was established here for the purpose of furnishing a supply of such persons to foreign countries. On the other hand, Germany, Hungary, and Poland were filled with able and active Catholic emissaries of Spanish or Italian birth; and colleges for the instruction of the northern youth were founded at Rome. The spiritual force of Protestantism was a mere local militia, which might be useful in case of an invasion, out could not be sent abroad, and could therefore make no conquests. Rome had such a local militia; but she had also a force disposable at a moment's notice for foreign service, however dangerous or disagreeable. If it was thought at head-quarters that a Jesuit at Palermo was qualified by his talents and character to withstand the Reformers in Lithuania, the order was instantly given and instantly obeyed. In a month, the faithful servant of the Church was preaching, cate-able sin. He imputes every wild fancy that chising, confessing, beyond the Niemen. In England it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or coal-heaver hears a sermon, or falls in with a tract, which alarms him about the state of his soul. If he be a man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks him. self given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has not committed the unpardon springs up in his mind to the whisper of a It is impossible to deny that the polity of the Church of Rome is the very masterpiece of human wisdom. In truth, nothing but such a polity could, against such assaults, have borne up such doctrines. The experience of twelve hundred eventful years, the ingenuity and patient care of forty generations of statesmen, have improved it to such perfection, that among the contrivances of political abilities it occupies the highest place. The stronger our conviction that reason and Scripture were decidedly on the side of Protestantism, the greater is the reluctant admiration with which we regard that system of tactics against which rea-shine is on his path. He ascends the Deson and Scripture were arrayed in vain. If we went at large into this most interesting subject, we should fill volumes. We will, therefore, at present advert to only one important part of the policy of the Church of Rome. She thoroughly understands, what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. In some sects-particularly in infant sects-enthusiasm is suffered to be rampant. In other sects-particularly in sects long established and richly endowed—it is regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church neither submits to enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses it. She considers it as a great moving force which in itself, like the muscular powers of a fine horse, is neither good nor evil, but which may be so directed as to proJuce great good or great evil; and she as lectable Mountains, and catches from their summit a distant view of the shining city which is the end of his pilgrimage. Then arises in his mind a natural, and surely not a censurable desire, to impart to others the thoughts of which his own heart is full-to warn the careless, to comfort those who are troubled in spirit. The impulse which urges him to devote his whole life to the teaching of religion, is a strong passion in the guise of a duty. He exhorts his neighbours; and if he be a man of strong parts, he often does su with great effect. He pleads as if he were pleading for his life, with tears and pathetic gestures, and burning words; and he soon finds with delight, not perhaps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts hearers who sleep |